As described in commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 5,056,343 issued Oct. 15, 1991 a motor-vehicle latch has an actuating lever displaceable between a position in which a respective door of the vehicle is locked and a position in which the respective door is unlocked. A locking knob connected to the lever is accessible from inside the vehicle to displace the lever between its positions. The actuator has a housing mounted directly on the door latch and formed with at least one longitudinally directed abutment face, a motor in the housing, a nut longitudinally displaceable in the housing by the motor between unlocked, locked, and antitheft positions, and a slide in the housing movable by the nut between locked and unlocked positions and formed with a recess receiving a portion projecting from the lever. At least one flexible arm extends longitudinally from the slide and has a head formed with a face directed longitudinally opposite the abutment face of the housing. These faces longitudinally confront but are out of longitudinal line with each other in the locked positions of the slide and nut. An actuating formation on the nut is engageable with the arm for laterally elastically deflecting the arm on displacement of the nut from the respective locked to the antitheft position. Thus the faces are longitudinally aligned and prevent displacement of the slide into the unlocked position with the nut in th antitheft position.
Such a lock has a manual override so that in the locked and unlocked positions the slide can be shifted manually. While this system is fairly effective, manually overriding the power actuation upsets the timing of the assembly. Thus once, for instance, a door that has been locked by the power actuator has been unlocked manually, it is necessary to cycle the power actuator through the locked position to set the parts back in the right positions relative to each other.